Geo-economic conflict has become the topmost risk facing the world in 2026, while it is cyber insecurity for India, a new study showed on Wednesday.
Releasing its annual Global Risks Report ahead of the Davos annual meeting, the World Economic Forum said that geo-economic confrontation has climbed eight positions to become the topmost risk globally for a two-year period, followed by misinformation and disinformation, societal polarisation, extreme weather and interstate conflict.
On a longer-term 10-year horizon, extreme weather events remain the biggest risk, followed by biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to earth systems, misinformation and disinformation and adverse outcomes of AI technologies. In the case of India, the study identified the top five risks as cyber insecurity, income inequality, insufficient public services and social protections, economic downturn and state-based armed conflict.
Highlighting critical infrastructure as a new front for warfare globally, the WEF said governments with upstream control over rivers and reservoirs could be tempted to divert water to their own populations at the expense of neighbouring countries as water security concerns are likely to continue rising worldwide.
"Potential flashpoints over the next decade could include the Indus River Basin between India and Pakistan or Afghanistan's construction of the Qosh Tepa Canal, which could diminish the flow of Amu Darya River into Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan," it said.
At the same time, the WEF cited India's Unified Payments Interface as "a good example" for the governments to take measures to make their banking systems more attractive and, by extension, more resilient in the face of potential future global debt or broader financial crises. On risks emanating from misinformation and disinformation, it said a particular problem area is the proliferation of deep fakes or digitally altered videos, images and audio recordings.
It said deep fakes have started to proliferate and have a greater influence on politics and electoral processes and their weaponisation can undermine trust in democratic institutions, contributing to more political polarisation, and can lead to the incitement of political violence or social upheaval.
"Recent elections in the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Japan, India and Argentina have all had to contend with such fabricated content on social media, depicting fictional events or discrediting political candidates, blurring the line between fact and fiction," it said.
The report is WEF's flagship publication on global risks and is now in its 21st edition. Its findings are likely to be debated in detail during the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos next week.
It leverages insights from the Global Risks Perception Survey, which draws on the views of over 1,300 global leaders and experts from academia, business, government, international organisations and civil society, as well as the Global Risks Report Advisory Board, the Global Future Councils Network and the WEF's C-suite communities.
The outlook from leaders and experts showed deep concern as half of those surveyed anticipate a turbulent or stormy world over the next two years, up 14 percentage points from last year. A further 40 per cent expect the two-year outlook to be unsettled at the very least, while 9 per cent expect stability and just 1 per cent predict calm.
When it comes to the outlook for the next 10 years, 57 per cent expect a turbulent or stormy world, 32 per cent expect things to be unsettled, 10 per cent predict stability and 1 per cent anticipate calm.
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